Artist of the Week

Artist: Monika BlaszczakArtform: Dancer, choreographer and model

What do you do and what are your main focuses?I’m a dancer, choreographer and model. My work's focus is on the bodyand it's relationship to space and it's aim is to pursue practices of decolonisation (mainly from a feminist, queer perspective).​​Where have you studied?Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and aState Ballet School in Poznan, Poland.

Tell us a bit about 'silk'.‘“silk” is the first part of the trilogy “silk / marble / saliva” which looks at intimacy in the contemporary world, with a particular focus on the influence of new media and digital technology on the experiences of love and desire.​

Why do you dance?I do it because it is necessary for me to do it.

Who are you influenced by? The list would be very long, and wouldn’t be composed only of the names of the artists who managed to find themselves in thebooks of history of art. I’m influences by my past, my family, the sky that I see when I wake up, the rent I need to pay living in London, my friends, my dreams, etc, etc.

What excites you about the art world today? Perhaps the necessity to respond to theclimate emergency and inviting the world to look at their everyday behaviour from a critical perspective.

Do you have a favourite genre? No – I’m not really interested in this kind of divisions anyway. At the moment artists need to work not only across genres and disciplines but across even more distanced fields that are not necessarily “art”. I like thinking of my work as something that spills out of fixed definitions and territories.

What are your future ambitions?Making work and fighting for what I find important!

Talent or hard work?​Hard work, I don’t really believe in “talent”. I do think there are certain levels and dimensions of being sensitive to different things, but always work can be done to deepen whatever one is interested in. Contemporary art anyway isn’t so interested anymore in “excellence” or “virtuosity”, therefore it’s only about the work and experimentation.

Anything interesting coming up soon?​A lot of events, performances in clubs andsurprising spaces, as well as my final degree show and the commissioned works toclose the period of my studies at Laban.